Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 3.0 technology uses multiple bonded channels to enable services such as Internet Protocol (IP) video delivery. The video streams are typically delivered as multicast packets to a cable modem termination system (CMTS) and “switched” by the CMTS so that only the video streams that a customer is watching are actually sent down a DOCSIS downstream channel. Since the bandwidth required may exceed the capacity of the channel and drop packets, the prior art describes a variety of improvements to channel bonding to improve the quality of service.
The prior art also describes an innovation that overlaps bonding groups that span multiple channels. In this case, the CMTS scheduler implements instantaneous load balancing to schedule excess peak Variable Bit Rate (VBR) video on DOCSIS channels with extra capacity, or conversely to allow best effort High Speed Data (HSD) to utilize DOCSIS channels when the VBR video is in a “valley”. The prior art describes load balancing across a bonding group that is within the control of a single CMTS entity; however, as IP video delivery over DOCSIS expands and scales, there are scenarios where the DOCSIS channels that are available to leverage are spread across multiple devices. In a first scenario, the deployed system uses a DOCSIS IP Television (IPTV) Bypass Architecture (DIBA) to send the IP video directly to an edge Quadrature Amplitude Modulator (EQAM) where it is encapsulated as a DOCSIS packet and sent directly to the user devices, thereby bypassing the CMTS. In the first scenario, the EQAM controls the IP video channels, while the CMTS controls the HSD channels. In a second scenario, multiple devices generate DOCSIS channels and broadcast those channels to user devices. For IP video broadcast delivery, a CMTS may use static multicast to deliver the IP video over DOCSIS channels to a large group of users that span many different service groups; while a different CMTS may provide the HSD and narrowcast video channels to a single service group.
There is a demand for an IP video delivery method and system to allocate DOCSIS flexibly sized bonding groups across multiple devices. The presently disclosed invention satisfies this demand.